


don't think, become

by WingedQuill



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Disability, Drowning, Established Relationship, Geraskier Midwinter Reserve Minibang (The Witcher), Hurt Jaskier | Dandelion, Hurt/Comfort, Hypothermia, Jaskier | Dandelion Whump, M/M, Major Character Injury, Permanent Injury, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 23:13:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29892012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WingedQuill/pseuds/WingedQuill
Summary: Jaskier is beautiful. He's clever and charming and colorful. Above all, he has a gorgeous voice.He's exactly what the siren queen is looking for. The perfect addition to her flock.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 18
Kudos: 256





	don't think, become

**Author's Note:**

> This is my (slightly late) contribution to the Geraskier Midwinter Reverse Bang, which I wrote for [this wonderful art by janekfan!](https://janekfan.tumblr.com/post/644959342990409728/for-the-geraskier-reverse-midsummer-minibang-a) I had a blast working with them and with my lovely beta [GenkiTaco.](https://genkitaco.tumblr.com/) Y'all rock <3

It was cold when Jaskier woke. The kind of cold that made him wonder if he had ever truly been warm, or if he would ever be warm again. The kind of cold that reached into his bones and turned them brittle, that stole into his lungs and made the air inside them sharp. The kind of cold there was no coming back from.

“Geralt?” he called out, trying to get his trembling arms underneath him. They sank into the snow, sending needles prickling over his hands. He shuddered, pushing himself to his knees and shoving his hands in his armpits, trying to warm his hands with his own body heat. It wasn’t much help. _“Geralt?!”_

No answer. Just the wind whistling through the trees, the ice rattling in their branches. 

“Where in the great, cold hells are you?” he grumbled, hating the way the words shook as they left his mouth. Hypothermia. That was all it was. Not fear.

He stumbled to his feet and turned in a slow circle.Dark forest and softly falling snow. No trail, no camp. Not even footsteps.

How the fuck had he _gotten_ here? The last thing he remembered, he was lying in a big warm bed, Geralt tucked against his chest, a fire crackling merrily in the hearth. Dozing away the adrenaline (and admittedly, the drink) of a successful Midwinter Festival performance. 

None of that explained what he was doing in the middle of the forest in only his nightgown. He didn’t _think_ he was prone to sleepwalking, even while mildly tipsy, and Geralt was a light sleeper. He surely would’ve noticed Jaskier crawling out of bed and opening the door. Which meant that someone else must’ve been involved. Someone else must’ve brought him here.

But Geralt would’ve stopped them. Unless—

He closed his eyes and put the rest of that sentence firmly out of his mind. Geralt was fine. Someone must have portaled in, grabbed Jaskier, and portaled out before Geralt could react. Or they’d snuck sleeping herbs into their firewood, knocked them both unconscious. They hadn’t used force. They hadn’t fought Geralt. They hadn’t won.

Geralt was fine.

Jaskier might not be soon, if he stayed here much longer. Already, his toes had gone from burning cold to totally numb, which he knew was a bad sign. With little else to do, he spun until he found what looked like the least dense patch of woods, and stepped towards it.

The wind _changed._

Not the sharp gusts that blew through his shirt and painted goosebumps up his spine, no. But the _sound_ of it, the soft clinking of ice, the mournful howl as it blew through the tight crevices in between trees. It shifted _._ Heightened, the clinking sound growing brighter, the howling changing from mournful to excited.

Oh.

That wasn’t the wind at all, was it?

He took another step, his legs trembling for reasons entirely unrelated to the cold. The wind grew even louder. Something cracked in the forest behind him. 

Another step, his mind racing as he debated whether or not to run, to let whatever... _thing_ was stalking him know he was aware of its presence. A clan of fae? A leshen? Some other beast hitherto undocumented by man?

Another step. The howling grew louder. Closer. And he could tell now that it wasn’t just one sound, one voice. It was many voices, all layered on top of each other, singing a haunting chord that made Jaskier’s lungs seize in his chest.

He abandoned all pretense and broke into a sprint, bringing up his hands to slam them over his ears. He didn’t know what these things could do with their song, but he didn’t want to find out. Still, he could _feel_ the chord, thrumming through the earth and up his legs, making every bone vibrate as his numb feet half-stumbled, half-ran through the snow.

There were blurs of motion around him, darting between the trees. The singers keeping pace with him. Chasing him. Toying with him? He didn’t know and certainly wasn’t going to ask them. 

He whirled left, darting away from a blur of red in the trees in front of him, and crashed through a thick patch of brush. And that proved that Jaskier’s feet _weren’t_ entirely numb after all, because he certainly felt the thorns pricking through his skin, driving into his heels and drawing blood. He bit his lip and kept running.

 _Whatever they do to you will certainly be worse than a handful of thorns,_ he told his shaking muscles, his teary eyes. _Don’t fucking stop now._

Time seemed to blur as he ran, as the humming grew stronger and stronger, as the world smeared into a nonsensical mix of red and black and white. He was aware only of the pain in his feet, the burn in his lungs, his own heart beating out _survive, survive, survive._

And then, just ahead of him, there was a break in the trees, the faint moonlight filtering down to the snow below. His heart _sang,_ pushing him forward as a sob bubbled from his throat. Civilization, at last. The town. _Geralt,_ waiting for his pursuers with a silver sword.

He batted aside the last few tree branches and stumbled out into the light, panting and grinning wildly—

And immediately skidded to a stop.

There was no town in front of him. Just a wide, unbroken patch of snow. A circle, surrounded by pebbles and rocks.

An ice-covered lake.

The hum grew stronger, vibrating up his legs and shaking them like a child’s toy. He yelped as they gave out, falling to his knees in the snow. He tried to stand again, but the song had its tendrils in him, slipping through his frozen bones and claiming them as its own.

They weren’t chasing him, he realized, as the darts of red zipped towards the treeline. They were _herding_ him.

And he had run right where they wanted him.

The figures flicked out of the trees, their humming a low drone that seemed to eat up everything Jaskier was, leaving only cold in its wake. His arms fell away from his ears, letting the song crawl even deeper, into his nerves, his heart, his soul.

He could see his captors clearly now, their naked torsos, their red and white tails, the elegant wings arcing from their backs. _Sirens._ Dozens of them, flocking around him, something like curiosity in their dark eyes. Or hunger.

He tried again to get to his feet, but the song soothed the urge out of him, smothering his fear like a blanket. One of the sirens flicked forward, darting through the air and folding herself gracefully on the snow in front of Jaskier. She seemed to be their ruler, gilded from head to fin in fine golden jewelry, no doubt pilfered from boats of drowned sailors.

“Do not be afraid,” she said, and her voice was bells and screams and crackling thunder, all at once. “We do not aim to hurt you.”

 _What do you aim to do then?_ he wanted to spit, but his tongue was a rock in his mouth, heavy and useless.

“This is our most sacred night,” she said, reaching out to place a hand on Jaskier’s cheek. It was even colder than the air around them, and _slimy,_ like fish scales. “The darkest night of the year. The night that the world is reborn.”

The hum shifted, and Jaskier was forced forward, his forehead touching the snow as he bowed before their leader. Her fingers skimmed along his neck, her thumb wrapping around to caress his throat.

“The night when people, too, can be reborn.”

Her claws dug into his skin and _tore,_ opening his throat up to the air. He choked, trying desperately to raise his hands to stem the bleeding, but he’s _so fucking heavy._

She slid her arms under Jaskier’s back and bundled him into her arms like he was a child, heedless of the blood spilling down his front, heedless of his frantic gasps for air.

“We sirens are not born, you see,” she said. “We are made.”

A flap of her wings and they were in the sky, the world spinning wildly around Jaskier’s head. He felt like he should be more scared. He was dying after all, a little bit more with each beat of his heart, his blood pouring from him and painting the snow with his life.

But the song told him that this wasn’t bad.

“And we heard your singing,” she said, dropping her head down to Jaskier’s throat. He could feel her breath at his windpipe, at his uselessly fluttering vocal cords. 

“You were destined to join our chorus,” she said. 

Something flowed into his throat.

“You were destined to become one of us.”

Something warm and bright and _living._

“Now _change.”_

She let go of him. He fell through the air, his arms flailing wildly, like a cast aside doll. He only had time to remember the lake beneath him before he crashed through the ice and into the water.

He’d thought he had been as cold as a person could get. He’d been wrong. The freezing water knocked the air out of his lungs in a flurry of bubbles, and he _became_ the cold. He couldn’t tell where his skin ended and the water began. He couldn’t even feel the heat of the blood pouring from his neck. Maybe there wasn’t any blood left in his body. Maybe it had been replaced with the water.

He couldn’t hear the singing anymore, couldn’t feel the vibrations in his body. He wasn’t sure if the sirens had actually stopped, or if his ears were just too full of water. Either way, the fuzzy feeling left him fast, replaced with a wave of panic. Because _gods,_ he was bleeding out, he was bleeding out and half frozen and he could barely kick his legs enough to keep his head above water—

He lifted his heavy arms, flailing for the edge of the ice. But his fingers were frozen and his arms felt like they were encased in iron armor. He could barely hold on to the edge, let alone pull himself up.

He kicked frantically, hoping to get just a bit of leverage, just enough to _save himself,_ just—

Just—

A sob burst from his lips and he dropped his cheek against the ice. He was dying. He was _dying,_ all alone, in the middle of the woods. He was dying, and his body would sink to the bottom of the lake, and Geralt would never know what had happened to him.

_Geralt._

He just wanted Geralt. He wanted Geralt back in his arms, both of them warm and safe. He wanted to feel Geralt’s hair slipping through his fingers; he wanted to drop kisses on Geralt’s shoulders, neck, lips; he wanted to sing him to sleep. He wanted to see him smile, small and unsure and _beautiful_.

He wanted to go _home._

 _I love you,_ he mouthed—to Geralt, to the world, to their life together— _I love you so much._

But he couldn’t hold on. And he didn’t want to drag this out, didn’t want to die of the cold. So he closed his eyes, let out all the air in his lungs, and let himself slide back into the water. 

It closed over his head like it was welcoming him in, cradling his head and dragging him down. It pooled in the gashes of his throat, swirling around the warm glowing breath the siren had whispered inside of him. 

He tilted his head up, letting the moonlight spill over his face as he sank deeper and deeper. His lungs burned, screaming for air. _Just breathe. Breathe in the water. Let yourself drown. Let yourself die._

Pain flared in his neck. He choked on it, gulping a mouthful of lakewater, sure that it was the end.

But the burning in his lungs—stopped. His head cleared. He blinked in shock, bringing up a hand to touch his throat. _What—?_

_Why was—?_

His skin was fluttering in the water, not where the siren’s claws had pierced him—there was nothing there but smooth skin, what the _fuck?—_ but on the side, up by his jaw. Almost like—no. No way.

He took another gulp of water, and felt the skin move, felt jets of water on his frozen fingers. His head cleared even more, oxygen rushing into his blood. _Gills._ They had given him fucking _gills._

_You were destined to become one of us._

They were turning him into a monster. 

He surged upward at the realization, kicking his legs as hard as he could. The water. Some part of this—this sick _ritual_ of theirs required water. He had to get out of it, had to pull himself onto the ice, had to claw his way back to shore.

He felt stronger now that the gash in his throat had closed up, now that he knew that they didn’t intend to kill him here. No, they intended to make him like them, a singer that lived not on tips and good ale, but on human flesh and blood. They intended to rip away the legs that had carried him all across the continent, the voice that had carved a new life for himself. Would they take his mind too? Pull out everything he ever was, so that he’d be happy with them? Or would they pull him out of the water and clap him in chains, force him to fly alongside them till he broke?

He sobbed, thrashing his limbs, dragging his freezing body towards the thin shafts of moonlight. Even though he was no longer bleeding out and no longer in danger of drowning, the cold was still consuming him, weighing him down, making him clumsy and slow. He wondered, in some half-dead, half-hysterical part of his mind, if the lake was freezing around him. Binding him in the ice like some sort of sick cocoon.

 _Stop that,_ he scolded himself. _You’re moving. You’ll get out of this if you just keep—_

His hand smacked into something hard.

_—moving._

Ice. A solid wall of ice above him, cutting him off from the human world. But that didn’t make sense. He’d punched a hole through the ice when he fell, several feet across at _least,_ there was no way it could reform that fast.

_The sirens have transformation magic. Who’s to say what else they can do?_

He slammed his fists against the barrier, but the water laughed at his efforts, catching his arms and slowing them, weakening them, until his frantic punches were more like gentle caresses. The ice didn’t even chip. He flipped himself upside down and kicked hard enough to break a toe, but that just sent the blood rushing into his head, leaving him even more disoriented and dizzy.

He gulped in a mouthful of air. Another. Another. He could feel the warmth of the siren’s breath spreading down his throat and curling into his lungs. Taking root in his torso, ready to start changing him.

The next breath of air came out as a scream.

***

When he was a child, angry and frustrated and searching for something he didn’t have a word for, his mother had looked down at him, lips pursed with disapproval . And she had said something that Jaskier had carried with him for years. Decades, even. He thought he would carry it for the rest of his life.

_You really don’t know when to quit, do you?_

***

He hadn’t then.

He hadn’t in Posada, when he’d been eighteen and baby-faced and still walking around in unbroken boots.

He hadn’t in all the years since, even as the world told him, over and over and over again, that he and his life and his love were not welcome.

And he didn’t now. 

***

He kicked and punched and raged at the ice, screaming out his fury as he raked his nails over it, not stopping even when two of them were ripped from his fingertips. He slammed the pointy tips of his elbows against it, then his knees. And then he just went back to hitting it, again and again, sobs and screams pouring from his throat. The lake ate up the warmth from his tears just as surely as it ate it from his body.

“No,” he whispered, his voice a rusty chain in a dungeon that hadn’t seen daylight in centuries. “No, no, no.”

But he could feel the warmth coalescing in his back, burning like a dying star at the base of his spine. If this were a song, if he were a hero, it would help him fight back the cold. It would strengthen his resolve, help him win his struggle against the ice. But it hurt. It _burned._ And the heat just made the rest of him feel so much colder, so much heavier.

He was a survivor. A fighter, even when the world screamed at him to stay down. It was one of the things Geralt loved about him--he’d told him that after the attack at the Tower of Gulls, woozy with blood loss, his arm and leg a wreck of shattered bone, smiling loosely up at Jaskier as he screamed at him to _stay awake._

 _You never give up, Jask,_ he’d slurred, his head nodding against Jaskier’s chest. _Dunno why you never give up, but I love you for it._

More than that, it was one of the things Jaskier loved about _himself._ The thing he loved most about himself, if he was honest. More than his voice, more than his mind, more than his beauty. His stubbornness had carried him through so much. Had kept him alive long enough to become silver-tongued and sharp-witted and beautiful.

He could keep fighting now. He _had_ to keep fighting, even as the cold dragged at his limbs, even as the fire scorched his back hot enough that he thought his skin must surely be melting off. It was who he was. And by all the gods and all the devils, he wasn’t going to spend his last moments as a person going against everything he’d ever been.

***

The pain was getting worse. 

Every single jolt of his limbs sent a thousand bright sparks shooting up his spine, but he gritted his teeth and kept kicking, kept punching. Even though he knew he was getting weaker and weaker with each strike, even though he could barely kick hard enough to keep him afloat. 

He couldn’t stop.

He wouldn’t stop.

***

He wouldn’t close his eyes, no matter how heavy they got.

***

_There was a warm, shaky hand trailing down his back, kisses following in its wake. The tickle of long hair falling over his shoulder blades. He squirmed a bit at the sensation, and Geralt stifled a laugh against his skin._

_“Ticklish?” he asked, and--_

_***_

_\-- Jaskier snorted, rolling over onto his back so that he could look into Geralt’s warm yellow eyes._

_“Now why would I tell you that?” he asked, nimble fingers finding the space underneath Geralt’s ribs and digging in hard. Geralt shrieked with shocked laughter, jolting away from Jaskier so hard that he fell off the bed._

_That had happened, just two weeks ago, so why --?_

***

_“Ticklish?” Geralt asked and --_

_***_

_\-- his voice was cruel, mocking, and Jaskier tried to roll over, tried to take back control, but Geralt’s weight was a mountain, pinning him down easily. His hands were iron bands around Jaskier’s wrists, and even the right one was steady, tremors gone, stronger than it had been in years._

_More than anything, that terrified him._

_“You’re so weak,” Geralt said, almost wonderingly. Like a child staring down at a torn butterfly wing. “So fragile.”_

_And Jaskier’s mouth was full of water, and he couldn’t speak around it, and Geralt’s too-steady hand landed on the base of his spine._

_“So easy to break.”_

_He couldn’t spit out the water, couldn’t move, couldn’t fight, could only cry and cry, and why was the room so cold --?_

_Geralt’s fingers twitched against Jaskier’s skin._

_“Igni,” he murmured, and the world went white._

_***_

His eyes flew open to darkness.

For a moment, he thought he had gone blind. Or maybe he had died after all, died mid-punch and sank down into one of the cold hells. Perhaps he’d rewoken as a drowner, fragmented and rotten and hungry for vengeance.

But the pain in his back was still there, festering like an open wound. He bowed forward, screaming at the sudden shock of it, wrapping his arms around himself. He was too cold, and too hot, and the world was dizzyingly black around him.

 _Stupid. Stupid, weak,_ **_useless_ ** _Jaskier._

He’d fallen asleep. He’d stopped fighting, and he’d fallen asleep, and now he was down too deep for any light to reach. Lost. Alone.

He didn’t even know which way was up. He might as well have been floating in the space between the spheres, an endless void of cold night. An expanse of nothing. 

He would fade away into this nothing. And his last image, the sight that he would carry with him till the spheres themselves went dark, would be Geralt. Geralt, vicious and cruel and nothing like himself. Geralt, hurting him and taking pleasure in it.

His sobs sounded so strange, muffled by the water.

***

_You really don’t know when to quit, do you?_

_You never give up, Jask. Dunno why you never give up, but I love you for it._

_I love you._

_I love you._

_I love you._

***

Despair didn’t suit him very well. It never had.

He wouldn’t let anything keep him in the dark. Not the pain in his back, not the slow, terrible feeling of his spine shifting, not the cold. And certainly not his own fucking brain.

After an...hour of tears? Maybe? Maybe more. But he needed some sense of time to cling to, some metronome, so an hour it was. After an hour of tears, after he had cried out the nightmare version of Geralt, he held his hand in front of his face and breathed out. 

Bubbles tickled the heel of his hand and crept up toward his fingertips. So he was right-side up. Good.

He took a deep breath and kicked his legs as hard as he could.

Every inch was a battle, every breath a victory. The agony in his spine peaked and curled, suffusing him in lightning. But he kept kicking, kept clawing his way through the ever-lightening water. It was brighter than it had been, when he’d first been dropped in here. Daylight?

Daylight.

He knew he wouldn’t be able to resume his attacks on the ice, not when the very act of swimming felt like he was ripping his spine out of his body. But maybe he could strike out for the side of the lake, look for a shallower place where he could stand and get better leverage. It would be easier to navigate through the water, now that he could at least see.

He swallowed. Exhaled. _Right. Okay. You’ve got this, Jask. And if you don’t...if you don’t. If they pull you out of the water and force you to join their flock. Well, you’ll just have to keep fighting, won’t you? Even if they wreathe your mind in siren song, you’ll just have to keep fighting._

The sunlight felt warm on his freezing face as he tilted his head up towards the surface, his eyelids fluttering shut. He wouldn’t let himself fall asleep again, wouldn’t let himself sink. He was just resting for a moment. Gathering his strength. Like he was always telling Geralt to do, on bad days.

Just a moment of peace.

_Bang._

He jolted, eyes flying open. Two hands were pressed against the surface of the ice, shadows against the sun. They vanished, only to slam down again, sending another _bang_ verberating through the water.

One of the sirens? But his transformation hadn’t completed yet--he still had his legs, and although the pain in his back was excruciating, he thought he would have noticed if he’d grown wings.

_Bang._

An ice fisher perhaps. Someone had seen him floating down here and decided to retrieve his corpse.

_Bang._

Or. Or it was the rescue he hadn’t allowed himself to hope for.

(art by [janekfan!](https://janekfan.tumblr.com/post/644959342990409728/for-the-geraskier-reverse-midsummer-minibang-a))

Another shadow appeared, hovering over the hands. And then the ice began to rattle in earnest. Feet stomping above his head, a shriek that reached inside Jaskier’s skull and shook his brain, a large shadow dropping to the ice and lying there, unmoving. 

For a moment, Jaskier could barely breathe. He knew there’d been a battle, and a victory, and a loss. He knew that someone was dead above him. But he didn’t know _who._ He didn’t know if it was Geralt up there, bleeding out in the cold, if a siren was ready to dig its teeth into his side. If he’d have to watch his love be eaten by the thing he’s turning into.

But then the hands were back, one steady, one shaky, pressed against the ice just like Jaskier had pressed his hands against Geralt’s heart so many times. Searching for a sign of life.

And he knew. He knew it was his love, his heart. He knew it was Geralt, come to pull him out of hell.

Jaskier kicked his legs one last time, drawing himself right up against the ice. He reached up a screaming arm and rested his palm against Geralt’s.

_I’m here._

***

They stayed like that for a moment more, drawing strength from each other, reassurance that they were both alive. And then Geralt’s left hand slid to the side, a few feet from Jaskier, and lifted off the ice.

Jaskier had never been so relieved to hear the familiar boom of Aard. The ice shattered inward, pushing a flurry of shards down in a cascade of bubbles. He watched his prison break into a thousand pieces with a distant sense of pride.

Hands plunged into the water, familiar hands, sword-calloused and warm. Jaskier stretched out his arms, every nerve in his body sparking and screaming, and took hold of them. He could barely bend his fingers.

Geralt squeezed him, just once, searing warmth-home-love into his skin, and then he hoisted Jaskier out of the water.

It was like being reborn.

He was hauled, shivering and sobbing, into the bright winter sunlight. There were hands on his face, stroking his hair, wiping lake water away from his cheeks. A voice, shaky with tears.

“You’re alive, you’re alive, you’re _alive.”_

Geralt leaned over him, blocking out the sun, and Jaskier smiled weakly up at him. He looked a wreck, all wild hair and dark circles, and he was shaking almost as badly as Jaskier was.

Jaskier tried to speak, to reassure him that it was okay. The siren’s warmth was leaving him, and Geralt had saved him from a terrible fate, like he had dozens of times and would surely do dozens of times more. But his teeth were chattering too badly to get any words out.

“Don’t try to talk,” Geralt murmured. He slid his arms underneath Jaskier’s knees and shoulders and bundled him against his chest. Jaskier’s head lolled against him, relishing the warmth beneath his cheek, the sturdiness of the muscle.

“The inn isn’t far,” he said, getting to his feet. Jaskier’s head swam with dizziness, and he resisted the urge to vomit down Geralt’s front. That wasn’t a very appreciative way to treat one’s savior. Or one’s lover, for that matter.

Instead, he leaned further into Geralt’s warmth and sighed, letting his eyes slide closed. It was over. He was safe, and whole, and soon this whole mess would be just another song.

Two fingers brushed the side of his neck, coming to a rest over Jaskier’s pulse point.

“You can rest, love,” Geralt said. “I’ve got you.”

***

When he woke, he was naked and warm, buried in such a thick pile of blankets and furs that he could barely move. But that was okay. He didn’t want to move. Not with the warm body next to him, not with the hand over his heart. He mumbled sleepily, nuzzling closer into Geralt’s broad chest. A laugh rumbled through him.

“You awake?” he asked, carding his fingers through Jaskier’s hair. 

“Do I have to be?” Jaskier mumbled. And then he froze.

Because that wasn’t his voice.

It was ice-covered trees scraping against each other in a storm; it was the cheerful tambourine of a wedding and the low wailing of a funeral; it was a battle cry and a love song and the first sob of a newborn babe.

It was a siren’s voice.

He lurched away from Geralt, kicking his legs to try and get the furs off of him. They weren’t a comfortable embrace anymore, they were confining, suffocating, he needed to get to a _fucking mirror--_

“Jaskier.” Geralt’s voice was pained, and horribly unsure, and why wouldn’t it be? Why wouldn’t it be, now that his love was a monster?

“I need a mirror,” Jaskier said, and his voice kept coming out _wrong,_ so _fucking wrong._ It was nothing like the instrument he spent decades tuning. “Geralt, I need--what did they _do to me?”_

Geralt swallowed. He sat up and peeled the furs away from Jaskier’s body, one by one. Then he leaned over and plucked a hand mirror from the bedside table. Jaskier snatched it out of his hands, holding it out at arm’s length and peering into the foggy silver.

His face looked normal. _Human,_ and that had him sagging against the pillows, relief pouring through his veins like a warm drink. Except for the slits on the side of his neck--his _gills,_ and wasn’t that _fucking weird--_ he still looked like himself.

But he sounded nothing like himself. And that. That was worse.

“They changed you,” Geralt whispered. “But you’re still--you’re alive. You’re _you,_ Jaskier, even if they’ve--”

“They took my voice.” It came out as the crash of symbols, the roar of thunder. He clapped his hands over his ears. “They took--Geralt, it’s who I am _._ It’s--I spent so long--it’s who I _am.”_

It was the thing that got him out of the hellhole that was Lettenhove. It was the thing that lifted him from poverty to fame. It was the thing that kept Geralt _safe,_ safe from rocks and pitchforks, safe from the people that had seen witchers as monsters for centuries.

What the fuck was he supposed to do without it? What the fuck were _they_ supposed to do without it?

A hand on his back, trailing light fingers down his spine, over the flesh that the sirens had tried to mold into their shape. It trembled against his skin, the fingers as jittery as ever. Even years after the Tower of Gulls, Geralt’s right hand still shook and seized up and had him gritting his teeth against invisible pain on bad days. He had only just begun to accept that it would never fully heal.

“Your voice is who you are,” he said, each word carefully measured, “just as much as my hands are who I am.”

Jaskier swallowed. He squeezed his eyes shut.

 _Hours spent curled together in bed, Geralt sobbing into his chest, it hurts, it hurts, make it stop, please make it_ **_stop--_ **

_Geralt glaring down at his stiff fingers, forcing them into the approximate shape of Igni and getting only a spark._

_Days and months and_ **_years_ ** _spent relearning how to fight, how to hold a sword, and write, and knit, and, and, and--_

“This won’t get any better,” Jaskier whispered, thundered, chimed. 

A long moment of silence, heavy as an ocean’s worth of water. A hesitance. And Jaskier half-wanted Geralt to get angry, to _scream,_ to grieve Jaskier’s loss just as fiercely as he had grieved his own. He wanted him to growl that the sirens wouldn’t get away with this, that he’d track each of them down and slaughter them for what they’d done. He wanted him to promise that they wouldn’t get up until they’d found a cure, until Jaskier had his voice back, until he was _normal_ again.

Lips brushed his throat, dry and feather-light, right over Jaskier’s vocal cords. 

_He kissed along the mottled mess of scars that was Geralt’s right arm, his left thigh. Geralt stared up at him, woozy with pain, tears brimming in his eyes._

_“Why? Why are you kissing them? Why do you_ **_love_ ** _them?”_

Jaskier let out a shattered-glass sob.

_“Because they’re part of you. They won’t go away. And I’m not spending the rest of my life hating part of you, Geralt.”_

“No,” Geralt murmured against his skin. “ _This_ won’t get any better. But you will.”

He let Jaskier fall forward against his chest, wrapped his arms around him, easy as breathing. 

“You will,” he said into Jaskier’s hair, as the room filled with the sound of breaking glass and windchimes. “I know you will.”

**Author's Note:**

> did i find a way to sneak a reference to a children's cartoon into this witcher fic? Yes, but in my defense, it's a very angsty and meaningful children's cartoon


End file.
